Does anyone remember God of Thunder?
No, not the Marvel movie, or the KISS song, or even the Greek mythological God, but the DOS game about that Greek mythological God.
This God of Thunder is a 1993 DOS top down puzzle adventure game, loosely inspired by Zelda. It was made by a small team of people, and you can feel that scrappy nature in the inventive and sometimes janky puzzles, the interesting enemies but sometimes unfair placements, and the self-aware humor. It’s a solid game, and I played it a lot as a kid.
Something I never did as a chid was beat it. I got pretty far, and I saw my friend Xaq beat it, and while you can save anywhere, I was always stopped by some challenging room or another. I decided I wanted to see if I could finish the game as an adult.
I downloaded the first episode of three—this was a small DOS game released in the early 90s, so of course it was Shareware. I loaded it on my little hand held game emulator, and played it off and on for a week or so. It was really fun! I got a lot farther in it more quickly than I remember as a kid; that’s no surprise, just having an adult brain is often helpful, and I remembered a lot.
There were some tricky parts, but I was able to get to the end boss pretty quickly—I was surprised how short the game was! A child’s sense of time and lack of skill really inflates things.
The boss is Jörmungandr, the world serpent, and I got stuck on him. He’s only vulnerable from behind, and stays at the back wall mostly, moving very quickly to bite towards the middle field, leaving not enough time to get Thor behind him. What you need to do is use your primary weapon and puzzle-solving device, the magical hammer Mjölnir, which always returns to you like a boomerang. You have to throw it above the snake, let it pass behind him, then move in front of him so the hammer return strikes Jörmungandr in the back of the head. While avoiding the snake’s attack. While he’s moving. And avoiding the fireballs that Jörmungandr also keeps the battlefield littered with. And do that 10 times. And you can maybe take 3 or 4 hits. It’s tough!
I was stuck, but I told Xaq about it. In classic fashion, he told me I was a sucker for not being able to beat the game, so I challenged him to beat it himself. He hadn’t played the game in years, and was starting from the beginning, so I felt confident I could beat it before he did.
He beat the entire game the same day.
So that boiled my bacon. I kept trying, and it took me several more days, but I finally beat the boss. I thought I didn’t, because we ended up killing each other at the same time. When I respawned in the boss arena, the game let me win. I’ll take it!
In commemoration, I sent Xaq this sensitive photo.
God of Thunder is a good game, and time well spent if you’re looking for a fun little puzzle/action game. Now I’ll have to play parts two and three.